Confidence
by DeadlySerious
Summary: This is the first of three planned stories, taking place in the gaming world, specifically, one similar to that of the adventure games. All feedback welcome, and I have rated it M due to some language, violence etc. I also have an OC protaganist.
1. Chapter 1

**One**

His weapon was loaded. Designated an R-17 sniper rifle, it would tear through the target like a knife through hot butter. His name was Alex Sands, and he worked for HITE, a top-secret squad, consisting of GUN's best. High-Influence-Target-Elimination had received orders that they'd been expecting for days now, to locate and eliminate Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik, a certified genius, and madman. It had taken four days for Alex to find Eggman's base, hidden deep within Mystic Ruins, but he didn't expect it to take more than four minutes to land a killing shot. He lined up the target in the centre of his sights, his suit's cloaking system kicking in automatically, as a response to him staying still for more than six seconds, and he pulled the trigger. The mission was complete, Eggman was dead and … a shield of light appeared exactly where his reticule had aimed. An evil grin spread across the startlingly obese scientist's face, and Alex's enhanced sound system, picked up on the word's "nice try" before the door closed behind Ivo and heavy shielding formed a bubble around the entire complex. He didn't try again, the shield would keep him out, but that didn't matter, an orbital strike would take care of that shield after he reported his findings. His day only got properly messed up when his radar blared into his ear, confidently telling him that six targets were practically touching him, all well and good save for the fact that they would have to have appeared from nowhere, and be completely invisible, as they were no-where to be found. A moment's thought heralded the answer, and Alex looked up to see six air-to-ground rockets, burning from re-entry, and heading straight for him. "Hell" he cursed, immediately lining up the first shot. His panicked aim and the difficulty of hitting a speeding missile made his bullet burn through the flames from the missile's booster. He took a few more moments to line up his second shot, yielding the results of one bullet flying through the air on an accurate collision course with the missile, until, with a tiny burst of flame, the explosive danced to the side. Somehow it had detected his bullet and, even more amazingly, dodged it in the space of mere moments. He was screwed. Seconds until impact and no realistic chance of landing a single shot, Alex let the final shots fire out of frustration more than any misguided hope of surviving. His saviour came in the form of something deep red and excitingly mysterious. Knuckles grabbed the first missile, even while stepping across the second and third, each spinning off, wild, and eerily silent, before detonating with an ear-splitting explosion, muffled by emergency noise dampeners automatically triggered in his suit. Knuckles, seemingly oblivious to the sound, made his next move by throwing the missile he had in his hand, adding a dash of style with a front flip, as it took out two others. He then grabbed hold of the final one, pulling it off course, and dismounted moments before it touched down. The echidna was knocked back by the explosion, and grabbed onto a tree as he passed, tearing his momentum from him. After it had served its purpose he immediately let go and hit the ground without flinching. Alex was left speechless as Knuckles stood; only managing a few moments of pride at what he had just done, before falling to one knee, and then his side.

Alex stayed with Knuckles until he woke up again. Friendly as it sounds, there was nothing friendly about the rifle Knuckles found himself looking down.

"Who or what the hell are you?" were Alex's first words, his voiced tinged with a fear spawned from confusion.

"My name is Knuckles the Echidna, guardian of the"

"Shut up, just shut up. You really expect me to believe that "guardian of the Master Emerald" line. God damn it I've heard a lot but now you expect me to believe that you're some mythical creature, who doesn't exist, who lives on an island, which doesn't exist, guarding a jewel, which doesn't freaking well exist, do you see the problem here" Alex's voice was rising throughout this.

"Care to explain why a bi-pedal creature, who's quite clearly not human, can be found holding his own in an argument with a human"

"I don't know isn't that obvious I don't freaking well know what the hell am I supposed to say you're not supposed to exist there is no angel island or we'd have found it it's not there you're not human why are you not human I don't understand how you can talk and not be human you're not human you're not supposed to talk god damn it you're not supposed to talk you're supposed to be an animal not talking like a human you're not a human why the hell what the hell what in God's name is happening you're not human you're not" Alex was finally silenced by Knuckles' fist flooring him. He didn't get up. The pain of the punch was nothing compared to the impossibility screaming at him, the contradiction which went against his most basic beliefs, which were given him as a child, the fundamental knowledge that the thing standing above him should not be talking. His world crashed down in ways he had never imagined, and it took him a full half-hour before he gathered the resolve to search for truth. Slowly he climbed to his feet. When he got there, he didn't know which question to ask first, and silence continued until he found a place to start from. "Where is Angel Island, and why has no-one found it?"

Knuckles' response was not the one he was looking for, a calm explanation of how he could never tell that to anyone who he did not trust completely. Alex wasn't fazed, just disappointed and hit Knuckles with his next question "are there any other animals like you?"

"No"

Alex was relieved, one would do. "None like me, I'm unique, but there are other anthropomorphic creatures yes"

Now Alex wanted to punch the echidna for messing with his mind like that, but at least his next question was easy, who was a question he had been asking for years now.

"The few I know of live in a secret lab, close to here, Sonic and Tails. Then there's Amy Rose, not sure where she lives, but you can usually find her in Tails' lab. Apart from that, there's the Chaotix, they have a small house, also in the Mystic ruins, Cream and Vanilla, who live near the Chaotix, Shadow, another hedgehog, God knows where he is these days, Rouge the Bat, ditto, and Big the Cat, who lives in some hut in the forest. As far as I know that's it."

Alex took his time taking this in. If he'd been thinking straight he might have recognised Shadow's name from a file he flicked past once, but he wasn't so he didn't. "What do you know about Eggman?"

"We've been fighting him for a while now, if it wasn't for us, specifically myself, the world as you know it would have gone long ago, I know it's kinda dramatic, but what can I say, it's more importantly true."

"Are you willing to show me where any of the others live, or are they all as secretive as you."

"I would have said protective, but that's irrelevant. The fact is that you now know, and if you're going to tell anyone you can, more importantly you have a radio, and you easily could, so why don't we go see if Tails is about, he'll know what to do"

So that's what happened. Alex went to a cliff at the edge of the mystic ruins, where an apparently empty building revealed a massive underground complex. If you know Sonic and Tails like I do, you'll have guessed by now that they were gone, and Alex had to wait. He wasn't predicting their first meeting going well, Knuckles had left him to return to the master emerald. So when Sonic the Hedgehog opened the door, he was expecting a bit more than the half-hearted greeting he received as Sonic passed, with Tails following behind, excitedly telling him about some insignificant upgrade to something called the Tornado. Whatever Alex said fell on deaf ears, as Sonic asked about the actual implications that the upgrade would provide. His interest piqued a little when he heard that it would make whatever the Tornado was have greater acceleration, but apart from that his reactions stayed relatively disinterested. Their conversation went on some more, with other mundane talk of something that had gone missing, various devices that hadn't worked, and a few which had been huge successes. When Tails finished his descriptions, Sonic finally turned to Alex.

"Who are you, why are you here and how did you find out about this place." His voice was calm, but he was hardly being subtle. Alex's next words would be important, and the first thing to do was to answer the questions. He had to match Sonic's calmness if he was to have any respect.

"My name is Alex Sands, I am here to find out more about you and I was brought here by Knuckles the Echidna"

Tails relaxed visibly at Alex's last remark, which meant that they trusted Knuckles. "Well then, if you want to know more about me, you can start by telling me what you know"

"Your name is Sonic the Hedgehog and that is presumably Tails"

"Nice to meet you"

"and you live here, where you are frequently visited by Amy Rose, and you have been helping Knuckles fight Eggman for a good time now"

Sonic laughed "You have been talking to Knuckles haven't you. You got most of that right except for the fact that during our fight with Eggman Knuckles has been a supporting player, but he'll be damned before he tells anyone that he spends most of the time chasing after the Master Emerald after it's been inevitably stolen or smashed, so he can put it back and go back to sitting on his island half-heartedly defending it until someone makes some feeble attempt on it and he has to chase them around again. Hardly the big hero."

Silence ensued. Nothing was left to say, he'd come across Sonic at an uneventful time, and Sonic doesn't do uneventful. It would have been easier if he'd been scared or grown protective or anything like that, but it seemed that he truly wasn't worried about someone getting into his secret home. Of course everything has a reason, and the reason Sonic doesn't know much about what to do in uneventful situations was because he hadn't been in many. The roof of the building flew off without warning, and instinctively looking up granted the unusual view of fire blasting above head, which fit with the noise, and the sudden lack of a roof. Robotnik doesn't stay out of the story for long. As the building burned Alex realised that he was watching it from outside. This was just once more that logic had been defied today, as he hadn't moved out of the building. Sonic was already in action, moving at speeds difficult to even register up onto the roof of the building. For anyone else this would have been a stupid move as the unstable building collapsed underneath his feet, but Sonic was already off. It had taken Alex this long to register what was attacking. The machine was an unfortunately un-aerodynamic box with massive boosters on the bottom and one side, the one on the side serving as the weapon that had taken the lab's roof off. The force of the attack was almost equivalent to that holding it in the air, so even as Sonic leaped at it, the deep red cube was moving backwards, and Sonic's split second attack fell short by mere centimetres. But the 'bot hadn't stopped, and Sonic's eyes widened as he flew through the flames of the attack, taking the brunt of the attack. He returned to the ground still burning and screaming, a quick roll quelled the worst of the flames, but Sonic was still determined to win, and took off again, leaving a trail of smoke behind him. The hedgehog did not fall short this time, but he then found out the reason for the design, and for the machine going for the house first. It was almost perfectly smooth, and Sonic had nothing to grip to on the side, leaving him falling once more. Then the machine took off, reacting to a sound Alex hadn't even heard yet. A mechanical whirring from beneath the cliff. What Alex didn't see was a section of the cliff's wall opening beneath his feet. Tails, who had not fled the burning building, but gone deeper into the complex below, was preparing for the Tornado's next flight. He took off, and went in an arc across the sky, even as the robot released more fire in the direction of the fragile biplane. Tails brought the ship around, releasing missiles, forcing Eggman's machine to turn towards them, so Tails was allowed an opening beneath it, where he flew, Sonic leaping off the edge of the cliff to land on the wing of the plane, grabbing a handle pre-emptively located on the side, they'd done this before. Tails tried to get in close again, but couldn't get through the wall of fire permanently aimed at his ship. Alex saw the predicament, and decided to get in on the action, pulling a small grenade launcher and firing slightly above the robot. It took the hit and spun to burn Alex, but he was already moving, pumping his legs as fast as he can, before leaping of the edge of the workshop's raised platform, and painfully rolling down the side. He wasn't going to rely on Tails to finish the job, and made for the stairs leading back up to the top of the hill, cocking the last gun that had ammo in it, his side-arm was loaded with expensive armour piercing rounds, one snapping into the chamber as he took the stairs three at a time. He reached the top in time to see Sonic leap from the side of the plane, and pull himself into a ball, spinning at massive speeds, both RPM and MPH. It was as if the robot wasn't there for him. At those kinds of speeds, going straight through it barely slowed him. The robot did what any sane person would expect it to. It fell, hitting the cliff edge on its way down, causing it to fall into a spin which it kept up until hitting the water far below.


	2. Chapter 2

**Two**

Shadow the Hedgehog was not pleased with his allies efforts. He had been lodging with Eggman since the failure aboard the Ark. He once again took a moment to distract himself with thoughts of what happened there. He remembered failing to stop Sonic from destroying the Eclipse Cannon, and then blankness until being reawakened by the Doctor, who told him that he'd been knocked out by Sonic, after he had been beaten, but something about that didn't add up, and he was confident that something had happened during the gap between his fight with Sonic and ending up on Earth, but the Doctor would divulge no more. In truth Shadow had reached the conclusion that he would never remember, but he would still occasionally spare a thought to digging up the truth. Conversely, he tried not to think about Maria. The machine he had placed in the Doctor's control room was ready.

Sonic collapsed after landing on the floor. His adrenaline had held him through the fight, but it was impossible to escape the fact that he had been horribly burned, he didn't feel pain on the way to the floor, and it only hit him on his way back up. He found himself in Tails' medical bay, the clock made it three hours later, 10 O'clock, assuming he hadn't been out for more than twelve hours. Someone he didn't recognise walked in the door, a human who a moment later he recognised as Alex, who showed clear signs of surprise at seeing Sonic.

"But you've only been out for three hours, how are you up already" Sonic was relieved that he hadn't been unconscious longer.

"What can I say; even asleep I get bored easily… That was a joke by the way" he clarified at the look of confusion that crossed the human's face

"It wasn't funny"

"Hey, live and learn" he was already standing, and Alex would normally have asked someone who had suffered severe burns three hours earlier that they should stay resting, but he didn't know anything about this guy and he seemed fine. Sonic wanted to see Alex's reaction, so he did some magic, holding out his left hand, and, by moving as fast as he could, made it appear as if a chilli dog had appeared in his hand. He got what he wanted as Alex jumped out of his shoes in surprise, as the hedgehog took a massive and probably worryingly unhealthy bite, performing yet another impressive feat by downing the whole thing in three. Sonic the Hedgehog saves the world one day, and destroys it the next, the amount of food he ate to keep him running should place him as one of the top single contributors to the worldwide energy crisis, if all the food wasn't grown and prepared by himself and Tails. After all, no-one was eager to supply him, and he could hardly ask them. An occasional pizza dropped at the door of an "empty house" was their only outside food, and of course the money had to come from somewhere. The problems that were presented to someone living without anyone having knowledge of their existence were overcome by the fact that they just didn't care. It was what they were used to and what they enjoyed. After all, they had no employment or responsibilities, the only thing that they felt they had to do was stop Eggman, and that was fun as much as responsibility.

"I'm going to tell GUN where Eggman's base is"

"One piece of advice, make sure they come when he's not there. A full scale attack will be phenomenally dangerous if the defences are run by him. His genius isn't restricted to robots you know."

"Yeah I'll bear that in mind"

Alex had to put some distance between him and the lab before radioing a pickup, so he boarded the train. He passed through Station Square, staying on board until reaching some unimportant village in the middle of nowhere. Disembarking, he radioed H.Q. and then had to wait; after all, they dealt with people in danger first. They didn't even send a helicopter; just some quiet guy in a car, Alex was unused to being pulled without the usual hail of bullets. When he got back things got faster, he was pulled into debriefing, where he gave what he would swear to this day to be a full account of the story, dismissing the end of the mission as "unimportant" and the small fact that he was picked up from somewhere miles from where he claimed the target was. He was neither surprised nor disappointed to be told he would not be on the team hitting the base. He didn't care, he had the date and he knew where he had to be; now all he had to do was make sure the hedgehog was ready on time, ready by tomorrow.

Sonic took the news better than he expected, and then went off casually to do his own thing, a one day deadline didn't seem to worry him too much.

Sergeant Radcliffe took the news hard, it was going to have been his day off, and now he's being told about a priority mission, and that he needs a team prepped by 9PM the next day.

Shadow knew. He would have laughed if he were prone to displays of emotion. One day, more than enough time.


	3. Chapter 3

**Three**

The helicopters were near the base, when orbital missiles fired. When they hit the dome covering the base, the explosions overloaded the shields, causing massive gaps to litter the dome. The shield went into an automatic emergency phase, pulling all possible energy from internal sources. Nevertheless the shield was down and GUN had their window, without wasting a second they were rappelling down through the gaps, Sonic saw them approaching the ground, then, as the last of them left his line of sight, the shield closed, and cut the ropes. His new human friend had been in action this whole time, and had rigged the bases door with charges. Normally the door's shields would take the explosion, but as they were in a weakened state, they once again failed, allowing Sonic, Tails and Alex to move into the long tunnel leading across the chasm into the base. Since the next thing he heard were the bases external cannons charging, it became clear that the shields were already online. Normally, Sonic would have matched the humans pace, but he had no time. The soldiers were already in, and they didn't have a clue what they were up against. He was in the base in moments, locking onto voices from inside the cavernous structure, and bee lining for them. The GUN soldiers weren't even trying to be subtle, which meant that alarms were already blaring and Robotnik was heading back. Hearing them approaching, he dived for cover, the nearest being a liquid filled tube, with some sort of Metal Sonic design floating inside. The corridors had been filled with them, failed designs or old models. A door that he hadn't even seen opened between him and the GUN units, releasing the first robot of the night. A traditional design, white with a machine gun replacing it's right arm. Sonic cursed under his breath. If he destroyed it he'd give himself away, and if not… his thoughts were interrupted by sounds of gunfire. Daring a peek from behind his cover, he saw armour piercing rounds hitting the robot. It stumbled back under fire, a shot taking off it's metalliferous leg, wires trailing from the fresh hole. Sonic was surprised to see that. He had underestimated the humans. He pulled back and waited for them to pass the door which was once again closed. They may have just found Sonic's first target.

Now, Radcliffe was in his element. He took note of the door as they passed it, believing it to lead to a hanger, but he had no time to waste. The corridors seemed to have a regular pattern to them, meaning that he had to follow the same root. Eventually he would reach something that looked important. Since he hadn't had more than one day to prepare, he was pretty much winging it. He started to worry that his group were in the wrong place when he saw the wreckage. The roof and walls of the corridor had fallen in, suggesting that no-one had been there for a good time, but he had followed the pattern, and knew that this was the only way possible. It would take too long to check every possible doorway, so he had to keep moving. Another one of the robots emerged from yet another hidden door, and the GUN units instinctively split up and hid behind the wreckage. This guy wouldn't be a problem. When two more of them fell from trapdoors above, the Sergeant was given pause, but still kept his cool. Of course, he started to doubt when he saw them start to file around the corner at the end of the hall. The moment in which they lifted their arms to fire stretched, until the bullets started flying. Return fire was inevitable, and his men were shooting before he gave the order. Rather than telling one of his men to, he pulled the pin of his own grenade, hurling it as deep into them as he could. The deafening explosion tore through their ranks, but there were more than he expected. He received his first casualty, as one of his men, Small, took a hit to the arm while blindfiring. The soldier by his side dropped into cover, the blood leaking from his friends wound, and Small screamed for a medic. Radcliffe always handpicked medics. His soldiers' survival was paramount to him, so someone was already breaking cover to reach the wounded soldier and do his job. Radcliffe turned back to the fight, in time to see little more than a ripple in the air, cutting down rows of the enemy, and leaving before he knew what he just saw. Whatever it was, he owed it a debt. Small had got lucky, in such a tight corridor; there wasn't much room for the robots to miss. He was quickly learning what the enemies' strongest trait was. Unlike humans, they lost limbs and took bullets, but unless somewhere critical was taken out they kept coming. Shoot them in the head and they fired randomly, forcing the soldiers back behind cover, shoot them in the leg and they went down, but their weapons still worked and they would just lie there and continue tearing into you, and even if you took out the arm that was firing, they would charge, threatening to batter you with their remaining arm. The only way to stop them was to hit them enough to disable them was to simply hit them enough times that they either lost power, or ran out of ways to attack. Still, thanks to the mystery help most of them were destroyed and the leader ordered a simultaneous firing. Each and every man, save for Private Small, reloaded their weapon, and finished off the enemies by firing all thirty full automatic rounds in quick succession, all of the men fired at the same time and didn't let up until their weapons went click. The job wasn't over, Radcliffe had to remind himself. Small would live, but he was a hindrance to the whole group if he came along, and he had no intention of leaving him alone. Leaving a group with him would cause problems as well; they didn't want to be picking up stragglers if they had to leave in a hurry. The only sensible choice was for him to go ahead. Radcliffe ordered the wound to be bandaged ASAP and then they would move on. Small's right arm was injured so he could only fire a pistol, but once he was calm and on his feet he would still be useful to the squad. After the medics were convinced that he was safe to move, they continued into the complex.

Sonic hoped they hadn't seen him, but a part of him wanted to have the glory just once. Suppressing the feeling, he moved back to where Alex and Tails were working on bringing down the door. Sonic had fought Eggman long enough to know how his mind worked, and that robot emerging from the door like that had confirmed his idea. He firmly believed that there would be any number of robots on the other side of the door. He stood back as the charge went off to let him in, and the three of them entered together. They entered the next room, where Sonic remained determined that another door leading to robot storage lay. They started checking around the walls when the lights went out. When they came back on again, Tails and Alex were out. The lights flickered off and Shadow stood before him. Sonic didn't even have time to react before the foot to his face floored him. As Sonic fell towards the floor, he caught himself with one hand, turning the fall into a spin, snaking his leg out to sweep Shadow's from under him. Sonic continued his spin, repeating the same move as last time, only this time it landed in Shadow's face. With a mighty effort, Sonic used his arm to push off the ground, turning him back onto his feet.

"Give it up Shadow, you know you can't win. Get it through you're thick skull, I'm better at this than you." Shadow was already getting up again.

"Well then Shadow, you want to give up?" Shadow kept coming.

"Seriously man, no-one will judge you, it takes a man to give up when he's beaten" Shadow was nearly on his feet.

"Oh well, you try to be reasonable" Sonic lashed out, forcing Shadow to dodge the flying foot, but the kick was little more than a feint and Sonic's fist was already heading towards Shadow's exposed stomach. Shadow turned the duck into a flip, going over Sonic's head and landing on the other side of him, where he fired his elbows backwards, into Sonic's side, as he desperately tried to turn. Sonic took the hit and went with it, grabbing onto Shadow's arm as he pulled back, which in turn lent Sonic speed, all of which he put behind a punch aimed straight between Shadow's eyes. Shadow tried to move, but ended up catching the fist in the side of his head, spinning down towards the floor. He landed face down with his arms outstretched and pushed off the ground and back onto his feet, spinning on his left foot so that his right flew out and scored a grazing blow on Sonic, who remained unfazed, bringing both fists together above his head and bringing them down onto Shadow's. As Shadow fell once more, Sonic, unwilling to risk Shadow recovering, kicked him in the stomach on the way down. After landing, Shadow tried once more to get up, Sonic kicked him once more in his chest. Shadow flipped over his side, and landed, coughing up blood.

"Admit it Shadow, without the chaos emeralds you don't stand a chance."

Sonic wasn't sure what to do next. Shadow was down, but he didn't know how long it would be before Tails and Alex got back up again. He decided he would have to sit tight; the GUN units would have to take care of themselves. Say what you like about Shadow, Sonic was impressed. Tails appeared to have no permanent damage. Sonic respected that, he'd gone for a relatively painless knockout, rather than just bashing him until the job was done. It was the silent efficiency that worried him. Shadow hadn't needed long to achieve his goal. The blue and black had only collided twice before and both times had been in outright battles, so Sonic still knew little about this relatively new enemy. Now he had learned something new and he didn't like it. Eggman had always been a fan of the big battle. Head to head, perfectly fair and justified as far as he was concerned, despite the obvious advantage of the giant robot armed with missiles and lasers, not to mention his ability to escape if he lost, Sonic seemed to always be taking the risk of falling, but as far as the scientist was concerned, that was just how he fought, at the cockpit of a machine, and Sonic hadn't been worried, it was fun. Getting knocked out in the dark without a clue what was going on was not fun. Tails started to moan, he was getting back up. Sonic helped his best friend back onto his feet, just as Alex climbed back onto his. Shadow was gone. Sonic couldn't say when or how, but unless he had a chaos emerald he couldn't have used chaos control. It was irrelevant. Unless he challenged them Sonic wasn't worried.

Shadow moved back into his secret control room. The doctor had unknowingly lent him some of his robots, so Shadow had built a secret room of his own, before returning them in perfect condition to the Doctor. If there had been any wear and tear, the Doctor would blame it on poor design. Shadow liked being in control, and he didn't like it when he saw that the soldiers were approaching the Doctor's control room.

The Sergeant was relieved when he saw the he door, quite clearly labelled with Eggman's red faced logo.

"Subtle" he murmured under his breath. Approaching the door, the soldiers were already affixing silencers to their pistols. Silently, Radcliffe picked out a private and sent him forward to check the door, which slid open without complaint, without a noise to punctuate the silence. It was the jackpot. Computers and monitors covered in symbols he couldn't decipher if he was given the rest of his life. Of course he thought to himself, that's what techies are for. He sent the pair, an inseparable partnership of Rogers and Hartman, into the room. Without need for command, Rogers sat before the computer, and started attacking the keyboard, scanning through pages of information, before pulling out a mem/tran. The mem/tran was a memory card/transceiver, which stored information while sending it out on a secure frequency. After it had been attached to a suitable socket, Rogers started searching for the most important data on the computers. Hartman was checking through the room, looking for pieces of hardware which would need transferring out the old fashioned way. He came across a discrete compartment, with a machine attached to the inside wall, a thick black disc. He spun it over in his hands, oblivious to the unfortunate mix of chemicals that Shadow was pressing a button to mix at that very moment. The resulting reaction would be described by a scientist as dangerously fast and exothermic. As far as Sergeant Radcliffe could tell from what he saw that day, this translated into high explosive. The detonation killed Hartman instantly, destroying a large section of the room. Rogers was still at the other end of the room, so the heat wasn't enough for a complete kill. Shrapnel tore up his face and Radcliffe and his men were already diving for cover. When the sergeant deemed it safe, he and his men moved into the wreckage. Both men were down and medics swarmed. None of them went towards Hartman. His charred corpse didn't need examining. Rogers was found to be alive, but had suffered serious burns, and multiple shrapnel wounds, most alarmingly, a shard of glass which had gone part way through the lower half of his face. A medic informed Radcliffe that since there was not as much blood as there might have been, it was unlikely that a major artery had been cut, claiming that he had been very lucky. Radcliffe was given cause to ponder for a few nights ahead whether anyone with a shard of glass sticking out of their face could be called lucky. He then had a real problem. There was nothing he could do. Rogers needed proper medical attention immediately, but it would take too long to move him out. Every moment was important. Three soldiers were ordered to carry him. He had to assume that the explosion had taken down the shields or Rogers was already dead. They moved immediately, closing the gap between themselves and the final exit. As he ran, Radcliffe screamed orders for a CasEvac down the radio. They were losing Rogers and their chances of reaching the top before he died seemed to grow ever slimmer.

"New target" he screamed, without thinking. He had hardly seen what it was that he was ordering the death of before he shouted the order. B y the time the first soldier was aimed at the target, it was gone. He had hardly had time to register what it was the only information that he had really picked up on was that it was blue and smaller than a human, but still humanoid.

"Friendly coming out, hold fire" Radcliffe didn't know who the call had come from until someone rounded the corner. His black suit was clearly GUN, but it looked much more advanced, covered in electronics. His badge labelled him as a member of HITE, but what exactly he was doing here was still unknown, so while Radcliffe was relieved, he was still suspicious and kept his rifle aimed.

"What are you doing here?"

"My name is Alex Sands. As you can see I work for HITE, but I'm not here with them."

"You're AWOL?"

"Not technically. I'm not here on a mission, I just came along anyway." This didn't add up.

"How did you get in, the only entrance through the shield was at the top, and if you were there someone would have seen you?"

"Your orbital shots weakened the barrier everywhere, a demo charge on the door blew a temporary hole in the shield, and I walked in"

"You didn't come with a team?"

"That would be the crux of the matter at hand here."

"What the hell are you talking about, I don't have time for games Sands, answer the goddamn question."

"What I have to tell you is not classified, simply because no-one knows apart from me. You must not tell anyone Give me your word on that and I'll help you get your man out."

"Fine I won't say anything now just freaking well tell me before I shoot you in the head." Alex did not reply. He didn't have to. Sonic the Hedgehog walked around the corner.

"Jesus freaking Christ what is that thing?"

"My name is Sonic the Hedgehog. I'm the fastest thing alive."

"Yeah, I'm not ready to talk to that thing. Sands you'd seriously better start explaining or start moving" Radcliffe didn't have to ask twice. Sonic did what Sonic does, run fast and save lives. Grabbing Rogers, he heaved over his shoulders, and made for the exit, getting outside moments later. The helicopters were already moving close, when the first thing they saw was a wounded soldier outside the base, how illogical it was didn't matter. That was a matter for debriefing, and one that Radcliffe would have a hell of a time explaining while leaving out the bit about the incredibly fast blue creature. None of this mattered to Sonic, or for that matter, Radcliffe, nor would it ever matter to either of them. What mattered is when a technician whose last name was Rogers, and whose first name no-one on the mission had ever bothered to learn, got to survive, and live out any number of days, never re-joining the army, he was dismissed due to injuries, costing him his eyesight in one eye, but still living a life. He never forgot Hartman. But that was fine too, since there was someone left to remember him. Shadow didn't struggle as far as surviving was concerned. He left in between the bit where the helicopters left, and the base was destroyed by missiles from one of GUN's satellites. Neither Radcliffe nor any member of his team spoke a word about the reason why Rogers was found outside of the base… and a confused scientist returned to a levelled base, his only living ally missing, and large chunks of his life's work destroyed.

"I hate that hedgehog"


End file.
